Chapter XII: Part 1861: ). This novel deals with the conditions in Pomerania in (11)

And Hauke sat down; it seemed to him a matter of course that he should share in Elke's father's work. And when later the autumn inspection came and a few months more had been added to the year, he had really done the greater part of it.

* * * * *

The narrator stopped and looked about him. The shriek of a gull had struck the window and outside in the entrance the stamping of feet was heard as if someone were shaking off the clay from his heavy boots.

The dikegrave and the commissioners turned their heads towards the door. "What is it?" exclaimed the former.

A stout man with a sou'wester on his head entered. "Sir," he announced, "we both saw it, Hans Nickels and I: the rider of the white horse has thrown himself into the water-hole!"

"Where did you see that?" asked the dikegrave.

"There is only the one hole; in Jansen's fen where the Hauke Haien Koog begins."

"Did you only see it once?"

"Only once; and it only looked like a shadow; but that doesn't mean that it was the first time."

The dikegrave had risen. "You will excuse me," he said, turning to me, "we must go out and see where the mischief is brewing." He went out with the messenger and the rest of the company rose too and followed him.

I was left alone with the schoolmaster in the large bare room; we now had a clear view through the uncurtained windows which were no longer hidden by people sitting in front of them, and could see how the wind was driving the dark clouds across the sky. The old man still sat in his place, a superior, almost compassionate smile on his lips. "It has grown too empty here," he said, "will you come upstairs with me to my room? I live here in the house, and, believe me, I know the weather here near the dike; we have nothing to fear for ourselves."

_From the Painting by Jacob Alberts_

PERMISSION PHOTOGRAPHISCHE GESEILSCHAFT BERLIN]

I accepted gratefully; for I too was beginning to feel chilly there, and after taking a light we climbed the stairs to an attic-room which did indeed look towards the west like the other, but whose windows were now covered with dark woolen hangings. In a bookcase I saw a small collection of books and beside it the portraits of two old professors; in front of a table stood a large easy-chair. "Make yourself at home," said my friendly host and threw a few pieces of peat into the still faintly burning stove, on the top of which stood a tin kettle. "Just a few minutes! It will soon begin to sing and then I will brew a glass of grog for us; that will keep you awake."

"I don't need that," I answered; "I don't grow sleepy following your Hauke on his way through life."

"Really?" and he nodded to me with his wise eyes after I had been comfortably settled in his easy chair. "Let me see, where were we?----Oh yes, I know. Well then!"

Hauke had come into his paternal inheritance, and as old Antje Wohlers had also succumbed to her illness, her field had increased it. But since the death, or, rather, since the last words of his father, something had grown up in him, the seed of which he had carried in his heart since his boyhood; more than often enough he repeated to himself that he was the right man when there should have to be a new dikegrave. That was it. His father who surely understood it, who, in fact, had been the wisest man in the village, had, as it were, added these words to his inheritance as a final gift; Antje Wohlers' field, which he also owed to him, should form the first stepping-stone to this height. For, to be sure, a dikegrave must be able to point to far more extensive property than this alone. But his father had lived frugally for lonely years and had bought this new possession with the money thus saved; he could do that too, he could do more than that; for his father's strength had been gone, while he could still do the hardest work for years to come. Of course, even if he did succeed in that way, yet the keen edge that he had put on his old master's administration had not made friends for him in the village, and Ole Peters, his old antagonist, had lately come into an inheritance and was beginning to be a well-to-do man. A number of faces passed before his inward vision and they all looked at him with unfriendly eyes; then wrath against these people took hold of him and he stretched out his arms as if he would seize them; for they wanted to keep him from the office to which he alone was suited. And these thoughts did not leave him; they were always there and so side by side with honor and love there grew up ambition and hatred in his young heart. But he hid them deep within him; even Elke did not suspect their existence.

With the coming of the New Year there was a wedding. The bride was a relative of the Haiens, and Hauke and Elke were both there as invited guests; in fact they sat side by side at the wedding breakfast owing to the failure of a nearer relative to come. Only the smile that passed over both their faces betrayed their joy at this. But Elke sat listless in the noise of the conversation and the clatter of glasses that went on about them.

"Is there something the matter?" asked Hauke.

"Oh, no, not really; there are only too many people here for me."

"But you look so sad!"

She shook her head; then they were both silent again.

Gradually a feeling as if he were jealous because of her silence grew in him and he took her hand secretly under cover of the tablecloth; it did not start but closed confidingly round his. Had a feeling of loneliness taken hold of her as she watched her father growing older and weaker day by day? Hauke did not think of putting this question to himself but he ceased to breathe now as he drew the gold ring from his pocket. "Will you leave it there?" he asked, trembling as he slipped it onto the third finger of her slender hand.

The pastor's wife was sitting opposite them at the table; suddenly she laid down her fork and turned to her neighbor: "Good gracious, look at that girl!" she exclaimed, "she's pale as death!"

But the blood was already coming back into Elke's face. "Can you wait, Hauke?" she asked softly.

The prudent Friesian stopped to think for a moment. "For what?" he said then.

"You know well; I don't need to tell you."

"You are right," he said; "yes, Elke, I can wait--if only the time's within reason!"

"Oh God, I'm afraid it's near! Don't speak like that, Hauke, you are talking of my father's death!" She laid the other hand on her breast: "Till then," she said, "I will wear the ring here; never fear, you will never get it back as long as I live."

Then they both smiled and his hand pressed hers so that at any other time the girl would have screamed aloud.

During this time the pastor's wife had been looking steadily at Elke's eyes which now burned as with dark fire beneath the lace edging of her little gold-brocaded cap. But the increasing noise at the table had prevented the older woman from understanding anything that was said; she did not turn to her neighbor again either, for budding marriages--and that is what this looked like to her--even if it were only because of the fee that budded for her husband at the same time, she was not in the habit of disturbing.

Elke's premonition had come true. One morning after Easter the dikegrave Tede Volkerts had been found dead in his bed; his countenance bore witness to a peaceful end. He had often spoken in the previous months of being tired of life and had had no appetite for his favorite dish, a roast joint, or even for a young duck.

And now there was a great funeral in the village. In the burying ground about the church on the upland, lying towards the west, was a lot surrounded by an iron fence. In it the broad, blue grave-stone had been lifted up and was now leaning against a weeping ash. A figure of Death with a very full and prominent set of teeth had been chiseled on the stone and below stood in large letters:

Dat is de Dot, de allens fritt,
Nimmt Kunst un Wetenschop di mit;
De kloke Mann is nu vergån
Gott gäw em selik Uperstån.

This is Death who eats up all,
Art and science go at his call;
The clever man has left us forlorn
God raise him on resurrection morn!

This was the resting place of the former dikegrave, Volkert Tedsen. Now a new grave had been dug in which his son, the dikegrave Tede Volkerts, was to be laid. The funeral procession was already coming up from the marsh below, a throng of carriages from all the villages in the parish; the one at the head bore the heavy coffin, the two glossy black horses from the dikegrave's stables were already drawing it up the sandy slope to the uplands; the horses' manes and tails waved in the brisk spring breeze. The churchyard was filled to the walls with people, even on top of the brick gate boys squatted with little children in their arms; all were anxious to see the burying.

In the house down on the marsh Elke had prepared the funeral repast in the living-room and the adjoining parlor; old wine stood at every place; there was a bottle of Langkork for the chief dikegrave--for he too had not failed to come to the ceremony--and another for the pastor. When everything was ready she went through the stable out to the back door; she met no one on her way; the men had gone with the carriages to the funeral. There she stood, her mourning clothes fluttering in the spring breeze, and looked across to the village where the last carriages were just driving up to the church. After a while there was a commotion there and then followed a dead silence. Elke folded her hands; now they were probably lowering the coffin into the grave: "And to dust thou shalt return!" Involuntarily, softly, as if she could hear them from the churchyard she repeated the words; then her eyes filled with tears, her hands which were folded across her breast sank into her lap; "Our Father, who art in heaven!" she prayed with fervor. And when she had finished the Lord's prayer she stood there long, immovable, she, from now on the owner of this large lowland farm; and thoughts of death and of life began to strive within her.

A distant rumble roused her. When she opened her eyes she saw again one carriage following the other in rapid succession, driving down from the marsh and coming towards her farm. She stood upright, looked out once more with a keen glance and then went back, as she had come, through the stable and into the solemnly prepared living rooms. There was no one here either, only through the wall she could hear the bustle of the maids in the kitchen. The banquet table looked so still and lonely; the mirror between the windows was covered with white cloth, so were the brass knobs of the warming-oven; there was nothing to shine in the room any more. Elke noticed that the doors of the wall-bed in which her father had slept for the last time were open and she went over and closed them tight; absently she read the words painted on them in gold letters among the roses and pinks:

"Hest du din Dågwerk richtig dan
Da kommt de Slåp von sülvst heran."

If you have done your day's work right
Sleep will come of itself at night.

That was from her grandfather's time! She glanced at the cupboard; it was almost empty but through the glass-doors she could see the cut-glass goblet which, as he had been fond of telling, her father had won once in his youth tilting in the ring. She took it out and stood it at the chief dikegrave's place. Then she went to the window, for already she could hear the carriages coming up the drive. One after another stopped in front of the house, and, more cheerful than when they first came, the guests now sprang down from their seats to the ground. Rubbing their hands and talking, they all crowded into the room; it was not long before they had all taken their places at the festive table on which the well-cooked dishes were steaming, the chief dikegrave and the pastor in the parlor; noise and loud conversation ran along the table as if the dreadful silence of death had never hovered here. Silently, her eyes on her guests, Elke went round with the maids among the tables to see that nothing was missing. Hauke Haien too sat in the living-room besides Ole Peters and other small landowners.

After the meal was over the white clay pipes were fetched out of the corner and lighted and Elke was busy again passing the coffee cups to her guests, for she did not spare with that either today. In the living-room, at her father's desk, the chief dikegrave was standing in conversation with the pastor and the white-haired dike commissioner Jewe Manners. "It is all very well, Gentlemen," said the former, "we have laid the old dikegrave to rest with honors; but where shall we find a new one? I think, Manners, you will have to take the dignity upon you!"

Smiling, the old man raised the black velvet cap from his white hair: "The game would be too short, Sir," he said; "when the deceased Tede Volkerts was made dikegrave, I was made commissioner and I have been it now for forty years!"

"That is no fault, Manners; you know the dike affairs so much the better and will have no trouble with them!"

But the old man shook his head: "No, no, your Grace, leave me where I am and I can keep on in the game for another few years yet!"

The pastor came to his aid. "Why," he said, "do we not put into office the man who has really exercised it in the last years?"

The chief dikegrave looked at him. "I don't understand you, pastor."

The pastor pointed into the parlor where Hauke seemed to be explaining something to two older men in a slow earnest way. "There he stands," he said, "the tall Friesian figure with the clever gray eyes beside his lean nose and the two bumps in his forehead above them! He was the old man's servant and now has a little piece of his own; of course, he is still rather young!"

"He seems to be in the thirties," said the chief dikegrave, measuring Hauke with his eyes.

"He is scarcely twenty-four," returned Commissioner Manners; "but the pastor is right; all the good proposals for the dike and drain work and so on that have come from the dikegrave's office during the last years have come from him; after all, the old man didn't amount to much towards the end."

"Indeed?" said the chief dikegrave; "and you think that he would be the man now to move up into his old master's place?"

"He would be the man," answered Jewe Manners; "but he lacks what we call here 'clay under his feet'; his father had about fifteen, he may have a good twenty acres; but no one here has ever been made dikegrave on that."

The pastor opened his mouth as if he were about to speak, when Elke Volkerts, who had been in the room for some little time, suddenly came up to them. "Will your Grace allow me a word?" she said to the chief officer, "it is only so that an error may not lead to a wrong!"

"Speak out, Miss Elke!" he answered; "wisdom always sounds well from a pretty girl's mouth."

"--It is not wisdom, your Grace; I only want to tell the truth."

"We ought to be able to listen to that too, Jungfer Elke."

The girl's dark eyes glanced aside again as if she wanted to reassure herself that no superfluous ears were near. "Your Grace," she began then, and her breast rose with strong emotion, "my godfather, Jewe Manners, told you that Hauke Haien only possesses about twenty acres, and that is true for the moment; but as soon as is necessary Hauke will have as many more acres as there are in my father's farm which is now mine; this with what he now has ought to be * * *."

Old Manners stretched his white head towards her as if he were looking to see who it was that spoke. "What's that?" he said, "what are you saying, child?"

Elke drew a little black ribbon out of her bodice with a shining gold ring on the end of it. "I am engaged, Godfather," she said; "here is the ring, and Hauke Haien is my betrothed."

"And when--I suppose I may ask since I held you at the font, Elke Volkerts--when did this happen?"

"It was some time ago, but I was of age, Godfather Manners," she said; "my father was already growing feeble and, as I knew him, I did not want to trouble him with it; now that he is with God he will see that his child is well cared for with this man. I should have said nothing about it till my year of mourning was over, but now, for Hauke's sake and on account of the koog, I have had to speak." And turning to the chief dikegrave she added: "Your Grace will pardon me, I hope!"

The three men looked at one another. The pastor laughed, the old commissioner contented himself with murmuring "Hum, hum!" while the chief dikegrave rubbed his forehead as if he were concerned with an important decision. "Yes, my dear girl," he said at last, "but how is it with the matrimonial property rights here? I must confess I am not thoroughly at home in these complicated matters."

"That is not necessary, your Grace," answered the dikegrave's daughter, "I will transfer the property to Hauke before the marriage. I have my own little pride," she added, smiling; "I want to marry the richest man in the village!"

"Well, Manners," said the pastor, "I suppose that you, as godfather, will have no objection when I unite the young dikegrave and the daughter of the old one in marriage!"

The old man shook his head gently. "May God give them his blessing!" he said, devoutly.

But the chief dikegrave held out his hand to the girl. "You have spoken truly and wisely, Elke Volkerts; I thank you for your forceful explanations and I hope also in the future and on more joyous occasions than this to be the guest of your house; but--the most wonderful thing about it all is that a dikegrave should be made by such a young woman."

"Your Grace," replied Elke, who looked at his kindly face again with her serious eyes, "the right man may well be helped by his wife!" Then she went into the adjoining parlor and silently laid her hand in Hauke Haien's.

* * * * *

It was several years later. Tede Haien's little house was now occupied by an active workman with his wife and children. The young dikegrave Hauke Haien lived with his wife in what had been her father's house. In summer the mighty ash rustled in front of the house as before; but on the bench which now stood beneath it generally only the young wife was to be seen in the evening sitting alone with her sewing or some other piece of work. There was still no child in this home and Hauke had something else to do than to spend a leisure evening in front of the house, for in spite of the help he had given the old dikegrave the latter had bequeathed to him a number of unsettled matters pertaining to the dike, matters with which Hauke had not liked to meddle before; but now they must all gradually be cleared up and he swept with a strong broom. Then came the management and work of the farm itself, increased as it was by the addition of his own property, and moreover he was trying to do without a servant boy. And so it happened that, except on Sunday when they went to church, he and Elke saw each other only at dinner, when Hauke was generally hurried, and at the beginning and end of the day; it was a life of continuous work and yet a contented one.

And then the tongues of the busy-bodies disturbed the peace. One Sunday after church a somewhat noisy gang of the younger landowners in the marsh and upland districts were sitting drinking in the tavern on the uplands. Over the fourth or fifth glass they began to talk, not indeed about the king and the government--no one went so high in those days--but about the municipal officials and their superiors and above all about the municipal taxes and assessments, and the longer they talked the less they were satisfied with them, least of all with the new dike assessments; all the drains and sluices which had hitherto been all right now needed repairs; new places were always being found in the dike that needed hundreds of barrows of earth; the devil take it all!

"That's your clever dikegrave's doing," shouted one of the uplanders, "who always goes about thinking and then puts a finger into every pie."

"Yes, Marten," said Ole Peters, who sat opposite the speaker; "you're right, he's tricky and is always trying to get into the chief dikegrave's good books; but we've got him now."

"Why did you let them load him onto you?" said the other; "now you've got to pay for it."

Ole Peters laughed. "Yes, Marten Fedders, that's the way it goes with us here and there's nothing to be done. The old dikegrave got the office on his father's account; the new one on his wife's." The laughter that greeted this sally showed how it pleased the company.

But it was said at a public house table and it did not stop there; soon it went the rounds on the uplands as well as down on the marshes; thus it came to Hauke's ears too. And again all the malicious faces passed before his inward eye and when he thought of the laughter at the tavern table it sounded more mocking than it had been in reality. "The dogs!" he shouted and looked wrathfully to one side as if he would have had them thrashed.

At that Elke laid her hand on his arm: "Never mind them! They would all like to be what you are!"

"That's just it," he answered rancorously.

"And," she went on, "did not Ole Peters himself marry money?"

"That he did, Elke; but what he got when he married Vollina was not enough to make him dikegrave!"

"Say rather; he was not enough himself to become dikegrave!" And Elke turned her husband round so that he looked at himself in the mirror, for they were standing between the windows in their room. "There stands the dikegrave," she said; "now look at him; only he who can exercise an office holds one!"

"You are not wrong there," he answered, thinking, "and yet * * * Well, Elke, I must go on to the eastern sluice; the gates don't lock again."

She pressed his hand. "Come, look at me a minute first! What is the matter with you, your eyes look so far away?"

"Nothing, Elke; you're right."

He went; but he had not been gone long when he had forgotten all about the repairs to the sluice. Another idea which he had half thought out and had carried about with him for years, but which had been pushed into the background by urgent official duties, now took possession of him anew and more powerfully than before as if suddenly it had grown wings.

Hardly realizing where he was going he found himself up on the seaward dike, a good distance to the south, towards the town; the village that lay out in this direction had long disappeared on his left; still he went on, his gaze turned towards the water-side and fixed steadily on the broad stretch of land in front of the dikes; anyone with him could not have helped seeing what absorbing mental work was going on behind those eyes. At last he stopped; there the foreland narrowed down to a little strip along the dike. "It must be possible," he said to himself. "Seven years in office! they shan't say again that I am dikegrave only on my wife's account!"

Still he stood and his keen glance swept carefully over the green foreland in all directions; then he went back to where another small strip of green pasture-land took the place of the broad expanse lying before him. Close to the dike however a strong sea current ran through this expanse separating nearly the whole outland from the mainland and making it into an island; a rough wooden bridge led across to it so that cattle or hay and grain carts could pass over. The tide was low and the golden September sun glistened on the bare strip of mud, perhaps a hundred feet wide, and on the deep water-course in the middle of it through which the sea was even now running. "That could be dammed," said Hauke to himself after watching it for some time. Then he looked up and, in imagination, drew a line from the dike on which he stood, across the water-course, along the edge of the island, round towards the south and back again in an easterly direction across the water-course and up to the dike. And this invisible line which he now drew was a new dike, new too in the construction of its profile which till now had existed only in his head.

"That would give us about a thousand acres more of reclaimed land," he said, smiling to himself; "not exactly a great stretch, but still----"

Another calculation absorbed him. The outland here belonged to the community, its members each holding a number of shares according to the size of their property in the parish or by having legally acquired them in some other way. He began to count up how many shares he had received from his own, how many from Elke's father and how many he had bought himself since his marriage, partly with an indistinct idea of benefit to be derived in the future, partly when he increased his flocks of sheep. Altogether he held a considerable number of shares; for he had bought from Ole Peters all that he had as well, when the latter became so disgusted at losing his best ram in a partial inundation that he decided to sell. But that was a rare accident, for as far back as Hauke could remember only the edges were flooded even when the tides were unusually high. What splendid pasture and grain land it would make and how valuable it would be when it was all surrounded by his new dike! A kind of intoxication came over him as he thought of it, but he dug his nails into the palms of his hands and forced his eyes to look clearly and soberly at what lay before him. There was this great dike-less area on the extreme edge of which a flock of dirty sheep now wandered grazing slowly; who knew what storms and tides might do to it even within the next few years; and for him it would mean a lot of work, struggle, and annoyance. Nevertheless, as he went down from the dike and along the foot-path across the fens towards his mound, he felt as if he were bringing a great treasure home with him.

* * * * *

Elke met him in the hall; "How did you find the sluice?" she asked.

He looked down at her with a mysterious smile: "We shall soon need another sluice," he said, "and drains and a new dike!"

"I don't understand," replied Elke as they went into the room. "What is it that you want, Hauke?"

"I want," he said slowly and stopped a moment. "I want to have the big stretch of outland that begins opposite our place and then runs towards the west, all diked in and a well-drained koog made out of it. The high tides have left us in peace for nearly a generation, but if one of the really bad ones should come again and destroy the new growth, everything might be ruined at one blow; only the old slip-shod way of doing things could have let it go on like that so long."

She looked at him in amazement. "Then you blame yourself!" she said.

"Yes, I do, Elke; but there has always been so much else to do."

"I know, Hauke; you have done enough!"

He had seated himself in the old dikegrave's easy-chair and his hands gripped both arms of it firmly.

"Have you the courage to do it?" asked his wife.

"Indeed I have, Elke," he said hastily.

"Don't go too fast, Hauke; that is an undertaking of life and death and they will nearly all be against you; you will get no thanks for all your trouble and care!"

He nodded: "I know!" he said.

"And suppose it doesn't succeed!" she exclaimed again; "ever since I was a child I have heard that that water-course could not be stopped and therefore it must never be touched."

"That is simply a lazy man's excuse," said Hauke; "why should it be impossible to stop it?"

"I never heard why; perhaps because it flows through so straight; the washout is too strong." Suddenly a memory came back to her and an almost roguish smile dawned in her serious eyes. "When I was a child," she said, "I heard the hired men talking about it once; they said that the only way to build a dam there that would hold was to bury something alive in it while it was being made; when they were building a dike on the other side--it must have been a hundred years ago--a gypsy child that they bought from its mother at a high price had been thrown into it and buried alive; but now probably no one would sell her child."

Hauke shook his head. "Then it is just as well that we have none, or they would probably require it of us!"

"They wouldn't get it!" said Elke, and threw her arms across her own body as if in fear.

And Hauke smiled; but she went on to another question: "And the tremendous expense! Have you thought of that?"

"Indeed I have, Elke; we shall gain in land much more than the expense of building the dike, and then too the cost of maintaining the old dike will be much less; we shall work ourselves and we have more than eighty teams in the parish and no lack of young hands. At least you will not have made me dikegrave for nothing, Elke; I will show them that I am one."

She had crouched down in front of him and was looking at him anxiously; now she rose with a sigh. "I must go on with my day's work," she said slowly stroking his cheek; "you do yours, Hauke."

"Amen, Elke," he said with an earnest smile; "there is work here for both of us!"

And there was work enough for both, though now the husband's burden became even heavier. On Sunday afternoons and often late in the evening Hauke and a capable surveyor sat together, deep in calculations, drawings and plans; it was the same when Hauke was alone and he often did not finish till long after midnight. Then he crept into his and Elke's bedroom, for they no longer used the stuffy wall-beds in the living-room, and so that he might at last get some rest, his wife lay with closed eyes as if asleep although she had been waiting for him with a beating heart. Then he sometimes kissed her brow, whispering a word of endearment, and laid himself down to wait for the sleep which often did not come to him till cock-crow. During the winter tempests he would go out on the dike with paper and pencil in his hand and stand there drawing and making notes while a gust of wind tore his cap from his head and his long tawny hair blew across his hot face. As long as the ice did not prevent it he would take one of the men-servants and go out in the boat to the shallows and measure the depth of the currents there with a rod and plumb-line, whenever he was in doubt. Elke often trembled for him, but the only sign she showed of it when he came home again was the firmness of her hand-clasp or the gleaming light in her usually quiet eyes. "Have patience, Elke," he said once when it seemed to him that his wife did not want to let him go; "I must be perfectly clear about it myself before I make my proposal." At that she nodded and let him go. His rides into town to the chief dikegrave were no trifle either, and they and all the work of managing the house and farm were always followed by work on his papers late into the night. He almost ceased to associate with other people except in his work and business; he even saw less of his wife from day to day. "It is a hard time and it will last a long while yet," said Elke to herself and went about her work.

At last, when the sun and spring winds had broken up the ice everywhere the preparatory work came to an end. The petition to the chief dikegrave to be recommended to a higher department was ready. It contained the proposal for a dike to surround the foreland mentioned, for the benefit of the public welfare, especially of the koog and not less of the Sovereign's exchequer as, in a few years, the latter would profit by taxes from about one thousand acres. The whole was neatly copied, packed in a strong tubular case, together with plans and drawings of all the localities as they were at present and as planned, of sluices and drains and everything else in question, and was provided with the dikegrave's official seal.

"Here it is, Elke," said the young dikegrave, "now give it your blessing."

Elke laid her hand in his: "We will hold fast to each other," she said.

"That we will."

Then the petition was sent into town by a messenger on horseback.

* * * * *

"You will notice, my dear sir," the schoolmaster interrupted his tale as he looked at me with kindness in his expressive eyes, "that what I have told you up to now I have gathered during nearly forty years of activity in this district from reliable accounts from what has been told me by the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of enlightened families. Now in order that you may bring this into harmony with the final course of events I have to tell you that the rest of my story was at the time and still is the gossip of the whole marsh village when, about All Saints' Day, the spinning wheels begin to whirr."

JACOB ALBERTS]

About five or six hundred feet north of the dikegrave's farm, as one stood on the dike, one could see a few thousand feet out in the shallows and, somewhat farther from the opposite bank, a little islet called "Jeverssand" or "Jevershallig." It had been used by the grandfathers of that day as a sheep pasture, for at that time it had been covered with grass; but even that had ceased because several times the low islet had been flooded by the sea, especially in midsummer, and the grass had been damaged and made unfit for the sheep. So it happened that, except for the gulls and other birds that fly along the shore, and perhaps an occasional fishhawk, nothing visited it any more; and on moonlight evenings, looking out from the dike, only the foggy mists could be seen as they hung lightly or heavily above it. When the moon shone from the east on the islet people also thought they could distinguish a few bleached skeletons of drowned sheep and the skeleton of a horse, though how the latter had come there no one could explain.

Once, towards the end of March, late in the evening, the day-laborer who lived in Tede Haien's house and the young dikegrave's man Iven Johns stood together at that spot and gazed out fixedly at the islet, which could scarcely be distinguished in the misty moonlight; apparently something unusual had caught their attention and kept them standing there. The day laborer stuck his hands in his pockets and shook himself. "Come on, Iven," he said, "that's nothing good; let us go home!"

The other one laughed, but a shudder could be heard through his laughter. "Oh, nonsense! It's a living creature, a big one! Who in the devil's name could have driven it out there onto that piece of mud! Look! Now it's stretching its head over towards us! No, it's lowering its head, it's eating! I thought there was no grass there! Whatever can it be?"

"What business is that of _ours_?" answered the other. "Good night, Iven, if you won't go along; I'm going home."

"Good-night then," the day laborer called back as he trotted home along the dike. The servant looked round after him a few times, but the desire to see something uncanny kept him where he was. Then a dark, stocky figure came along the dike from the village towards him; it was the dikegrave's stable boy. "What do you want, Karsten?" the man called out to him.

"I?--nothing," answered the boy; "but the master wants to speak to you, Iven Johns."

The man had his eyes fixed on the islet again. "All right; I'm coming in a minute," he said.

"What are you looking at?" asked the boy.

The man raised his arm and pointed to the islet in silence. "Oh ho!" whispered the boy; "there's a horse--a white horse--it must be the devil who rides it--how does a horse get out there on Jevershallig?"

"Don't know, Karsten; if only it's a real horse!"

"Oh, yes, Iven; look, it's grazing just like a horse! But who took it out there; there isn't a boat big enough in the whole village! Perhaps after all it's only a sheep; Peter Ohm says, in the moonlight ten stocks of peat look like a whole village. No, look! Now it's jumping--it must be a horse!"

The two stood for a time in silence, their eyes fixed on what they could see but indistinctly over there. The moon was high in the sky and shone down on the broad shallow sea whose rising tide was just beginning to wash over the glistening stretches of mud; no sound of any animal was to be heard all around, nothing but the gentle noise of the water; the marsh too, behind the dike, was empty; cows and oxen were all still in their stalls. Nothing was moving; the only thing that seemed to be alive was what they took to be a horse, a white horse, out on Jevershallig. "It's growing lighter," said the man breaking the silence; "I can see the white sheep bones shining clearly."

"So can I," said the boy, stretching his neck; then, as if an idea had suddenly struck him, he pulled at the man's sleeve. "Iven," he whispered, "the horse's skeleton that always used to lie there, where is it? I can't see it!"

"I don't see it either, that's queer!" said the man.

"Not so very queer, Iven! Sometimes, I don't know in what nights, the bones are said to rise up and act as if they were alive."

"So?" said the man; "that's old wives' superstition!"

"May be, Iven," said the boy.

"Well, I thought you came to fetch me; come on, we must go home. There's nothing new to see here."

The boy would not move till the man had turned him round by force and pulled him onto the path. "Listen, Karsten," he said when the ghostly island was already a good bit behind them, "they say you're a fellow that's ready for anything; I believe you'd like best to investigate that yourself."

"Yes," replied Karsten, shuddering a little at the recollection, "yes, I'd like to, Iven."

"Are you in earnest?" asked the man after Karsten had given him his hand on it. "Well then, tomorrow evening we'll take our boat; you can go over to Jeverssand and I'll wait for you on the dike."

"Yes," replied the boy, "we can do that. I'll take my whip with me."

"Yes, do!"

In silence they went up the high mound to their master's house.

The same time the following evening the man was sitting on the big stone in front of the stable door as the boy came up to him cracking his whip. "That makes an odd whistle!" said Iven.

"To be sure, look out for yourself," answered the boy; "I have plaited nails into the lash."

"Come along then," said the other.

As on the day before the moon was in the eastern sky and shone down clearly from its height. Soon they were both out on the dike and looking over at Jevershallig that stood like a spot of fog in the water. "There it is again," said the man; "I was here after dinner and it wasn't there, but I could distinctly see the white skeleton of the horse lying there."

The boy stretched his neck. "It isn't there now, Iven," he whispered.

"Well, Karsten, how is it?" asked the man. "Are you still itching to row over there?"

Karsten thought for a moment; then he cracked his whip in the air. "Undo the boat, Iven!"

Over on the island it looked as if whatever was walking there raised its head and stretched it out towards the mainland. They did not see it any longer; they were already walking down the dike and to the place where the boat lay. "Now, get in," said the man after he had untied it. "I'll wait till you come back. You must head for the east shore, there was always a good landing there." The lad nodded silently and then rowed out, with his whip, into the moon-lit night. The man wandered along the dike back to the place where they had stood before. Soon he saw the boat ground near a steep dark spot on the other side to which a broad water-course flowed, and a short, thickset figure sprang ashore. Wasn't that the boy cracking his whip? Or it might be the sound of the rising tide. Several hundred feet to the north he saw what they had taken to be a white horse, and now--yes, the figure of the boy was going straight towards it. Now it raised its head as if startled and the boy--he could hear it plainly--snapped his whip. But--what could he be thinking of? He had turned round and was walking back along the way he had gone. The creature on the other side seemed to go on grazing steadily, he had not heard it neigh; at times white stripes of water seemed to pass across the apparition. The man watched it as if spellbound.

Then he heard the grounding of the boat on the side on which he stood and soon he saw the boy coming out of the dusk and towards him up the side of the dike. "Well, Karsten," he said, "what was it?"

The boy shook his head. "It wasn't anything," he said. "Just before I landed I saw it from the boat and then, when I was once on the island--the devil knows where the beast went, the moon was shining brightly enough; but when I came to the place there was nothing there but the bleached bones of half a dozen sheep and a little farther on lay the horse's skeleton with its long, white skull and the moon was shining into its empty eye-sockets!"

"Hmm!" said the man; "did you look carefully?"

"Yes, Iven, I stood close up to it; a God-forsaken lapwing that had gone to sleep behind the bones flew up shrieking and startled me so that I cracked my whip after it a few times."

"And that was all?"

"Yes, Iven, I didn't see anything else."

"And it's enough," said the man, pulling the boy towards him by the arm and pointing across to the islet. "Do you see anything over there, Karsten?"

"As I live, there it is again!"

"Again?" said the man; "I was looking over there the whole time and it never went away; you went right towards the uncanny thing."

The boy stared at him; a look of horror that did not escape the man appeared on his usually saucy face. "Come," said the latter, "let us go home; seen from here it is alive and over there it is only bones--that is more than you and I can understand. Keep your mouth shut about it; things like that must not be questioned."

So they turned and the boy trotted along beside him; they did not speak and the marsh lay in unbroken silence at their side.

But after the moon had declined and the nights had grown dark something else happened.

Hauke Haien had ridden into town at the time the horse-fair was going on, without however having anything to do with that. Nevertheless towards evening when he came home he brought a second horse with him; but its coat was rough and it was so thin that its ribs could be counted and its eyes lay dull and sunken in their sockets. Elke had gone out in front of the door to meet her husband. "For heaven's sake!" she exclaimed, "what's the old white horse for?" For as Hauke came riding up in front of the house and drew rein under the ash she saw that the poor creature was lame too.

But the young dikegrave sprang laughing from his brown gelding. "Never mind, Elke, it didn't cost much."

"You know that the cheapest thing is usually the dearest," his wise wife answered.

"Not always, Elke; this animal is four years old at the most; look at him more carefully! He has been starved and abused; our oats will do him good and I will take care of him myself so that he shan't be overfed."

During this conversation the animal stood with his head lowered; his mane hung down long over his neck. While her husband was calling the men Elke walked round the horse looking him over, but she shook her head: "We never had such a nag as this in our stable!"

When the stable boy came round the corner of the house he suddenly stopped with terror-stricken eyes. "Well, Karsten," said the dikegrave, "what's the matter with you? Don't you like my white horse?"

"Yes--Oh, yes, master, why not?"

"Well, then, take both the horses into the stable but don't feed them; I am coming over there in a minute myself."

Cautiously the boy took hold of the white horse's halter and then hastily, as if to protect himself, he seized the rein of the gelding which had also been trusted to his care. Hauke went into the house with his wife; she had warm beer ready for him and bread and butter were also at hand.

He was soon satisfied and, rising began to walk up and down the room with his wife. "Now let me tell you, Elke," he said, while the evening glow shone on the tiles in the walls, "how I happened to get the animal. I stayed at the chief dikegrave's about an hour; he had good news for me--some changes will undoubtedly have to be made in my plans; but the main thing, my profile, has been accepted and the order to begin work on the new dike may get here any day now."

Elke sighed involuntarily: "Then it is to be done after all!" she said apprehensively.

"Yes, wife," replied Hauke; "it's going to be uphill work but that is why God brought us together, I think. Our farm is in such good order now that you can take a good part of it on your shoulders; think ten years ahead--then our property will have greatly increased!"

At his first words she had pressed her husband's hand assuringly in hers, but his last remark brought her no joy. "Who will the place be for?" she said. "Unless you take another wife instead of me; I cannot bear you any children."

Tears rushed to her eyes; but he drew her close and held her tight in his arms: "Let us leave that to God," he said; "but now, and even then, we shall be young enough to enjoy the fruits of our labor ourselves."

She looked at him long with her dark eyes while he held her thus. "Forgive me, Hauke," she said, "at times I am a despondent woman."

He bent his face to hers and kissed her. "You are my wife and I am your husband, Elke! And nothing can change that."

At that she put her arms close round his neck. "You are right, Hauke, and whatever comes will come to us both." Then, blushing, she drew away from his arms. "You were going to tell me about the white horse," she said softly.

"Yes, I will, Elke. I've already told you that I was in high spirits over the good news that the chief dikegrave had given me; and just as I was riding out of the town, there, on the dam, behind the harbor, I met a ragged fellow; I didn't know whether he was a vagabond or a tinker or what. He was pulling the white horse on the halter after him and the animal raised its head and looked at me with pleading eyes, as if it were begging me for something; and at the moment I was certainly rich enough. 'Hello, fellow!' I shouted, 'where are you going with the old nag?'

"He stopped and the white horse stopped too. 'Going to sell it,' he said and nodded to me with cunning in his eyes.

"'To anyone else, but not to me!' I said merrily.

"'Why not?' he answered; 'it's a fine horse and well worth a hundred thalers.'

"I laughed in his face.

"'Oh, you needn't laugh,' he said; 'you needn't pay me that! But I can't use the beast; it would starve with me. It would soon look different if you had it a little while.'

"So I jumped down from my gelding and looked at the animal's mouth and saw that it was still young. 'How much do you want for it?' I asked, for the horse was looking at me again as if begging.

"'Take it for thirty thalers, sir,' said the fellow, 'and I'll throw in the halter.'

"And so, Elke, I took the brown, clawlike hand that the lad offered me and it was a bargain. So we have the white horse, and cheap enough too, I think. Only it was curious; as I rode away with the horse I heard laughing behind me and when I turned my head I saw the Slovak standing there, his legs apart, his arms behind his back, laughing like the devil."

"Phew!" exclaimed Elke; "if only the white horse doesn't bring you anything from his old master! I hope he'll thrive for you, Hauke."

"He shall thrive for his own sake, at least as far as I can manage it!" And with that the dikegrave went out to the stable as he had told the boy he would.